>1. Do you write daily?___ weekly?___ irregularly?___ Is the writing a
>fixed part of routine, or does it follow other pressures/dictates? Please
>specify:
Most days pick up some words to see what's under them, and maybe make
some notes. Often, though, lose contact completely with writing,
sometimes for weeks or more, at least in any conscious way, due to
'work'. Then, maybe, I find some good notes, and something larger than a
line gets written.
>2. These days do you write in the same place e.g. in the kitchen/bathroom
>etc; on the bus to work? Is the workplace in any sense a protected space?
>Please specify:
Both the micro-level of picking up words & phrases, and the larger-scale
gathering, can happen anywhere, anytime. I find a long journey alone is
often productive.
>3. Drafting: notebooks, scraps of paper, word processor or what?
Notebooks, which I constantly mislay and find again years later, sheets
of contimuous stationery, wp, and (a recent happy discovery) index cards.
To work out some structures, though, (e.g. _Syzygy_) I'll use a computer
spreadsheet, or some other means of automation.
>3a. How are drafts organised - in linear/sequential mode, or in a more
>complex structure? Please describe:
At first a hopeless chaos, then, maybe, if some larger structure starts
to organize the material, a heuristic element starts to kick in with a
trial & error rhythm and many blind alleys. All failed attempts get
recycled - fodder for the next time, chaos again.
>3b-e. Why? How long has it taken this practice to evolve? Are you
>consistent in this? How aware are you of other writers' strategies in this
>respect?
I've grown increasingly aware over the last thirty years that this is
what I do, but it's not consistent, certainly not inevitable. Always
interested in what others do, to see what I can adopt and adapt, but I
find most poets far too fearful of examining their approach to writing to
yield me anything. I prefer more concrete analogies, like the design of
machines.
>4. A route-to-work question: what, in general terms, is the relationship
>between draft and completion?
Usually a slow process of accretion and attrition, with many iterations.
Very rarely, the thing gets written all in one foul swipe.
>4a. Does your motivation/intent change during this process? If so can you
>say how? An example might help.
Always trying to follow and understand what's happening, after the event,
until at last I catch up with it, or think I do, and it's time to stop
and see if I've actually done something new or just repeated myself or
someone else, and whether it's substantial or just smoke and mirrors. At
least once (Chimera, in the volume _stone floods_), I thought I was still
at the note-taking, playing, planning stage, and found the damn thing was
already done. Got a major kick out of that, until I realized I'd have to
follow it, and I'd have to change fairly drastically my notion of what I
was doing.
>4b. What do you mean by "completion"?
Abolutely agree with Lawrence (and Paul Klee): when I know what I'm doing
it's time to stop.
>5. Input: is there a way of generalising your raw materials? Are there,
>for instance, groups of books, musics, other artworks, or people in your
>life, which you plunder repeatedly? Name the most significant:
Books, a lot; most recently Lorca, Dogen, Neruda's Residencia (don't
think much of most of it as 'poetry', but it triggers things for me).
Music, where I'm sufficiently incompetent to be able to misunderstand
creatively. Same with stuff in other languages I only half understand
(and that goes for just about all of them). Examples of mathematical
thinking often spark ideas for formal devices, often, once again, only
partially understood.
>5a. What conditions input? Weather? Nation? the Sports pages? Rejection of
>all of these?
Best when there's plenty of light about.
>6. How open to mistakes are you? What steps do you take to encourage or
>discourage them?
Wish I was less uptight about them. Starting to use forms which diminish
my control, so the notion of a mistake means less.
>7. Roadtesting your writing: on a few friends? at readings? read to the
>cat? leave in a drawer for 6 weeks? Not at all?
Bother everyone who'll bear with me, as long as I think I'll understand
their reaction and trust it in its own terms.
>7a. Does this process transform the work? If so how?
Very rarely. But it (usually) makes me feel better, and other people's
first bewildered responses often indicate productive routes for the next
trip.
>8. Do you have lots of pieces of work on the go at the same time? Are they
>separate or all part of the same fabric? Or do you work methodically at
>one piece, then the next, then the next? Or in none of these ways? Please
>specify:
Just had what I thought were three quite separate fabrics come together
to make one, but it remains to be seen whether they'll stay that way. I
enjoy watching islands form, coalesce, and disintegrate, and the more
things I'm 'working' on at a time, the better the chance that will happen.
>9. How do you plan/prepare for performance? To what extent is this
>incorporated in the drafting? Is performance a fixed point in your intent?
Until very recently, not at all, and it showed. Still does, I think,
though I do try now to bear in mind that I might end up reading aloud
what I write.
>10. Are you obsessive about the practices you've described? Or could
>you stop and do something else?
As soon as I think of or hear of another approach, I'll try it out, and
see then whether it just falls away or gets incorporated. Anything that
promises a chance for serious play gets my attention.
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Trevor Joyce
Apple Cork IS&T
Phone : +353-21-284405
EMail : [log in to unmask]
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